Yoni: Chris is going to share some very powerful LinkedIn tips and best practices. So just a couple of words about Chris; Chris is a seasoned sales consultant and the owner of the sales blog – SalesTipaDay.com which I personally love. And we’ll share a link at the bottom of the page here. So Chris recently released a fantastic series of podcasts called “LinkedIn Social Selling Playbook for Sales Managers”. Now all of us here at ONDiGO found it to be super powerful. So we decided to share it here over podcast with our community of sales professionals. Hi Chris!

Chris: Hi there thanks for having me on again I appreciate it. So it’s nice to be able to share this information with your viewers. So how do you want me to start? Do you want me to talk about why I maybe wrote this?

Yoni: You could but I can share with you that you know for us we kind of realized that when you’re in sales after using your phone and email, LinkedIn is probably one of the most powerful, most effective tools out there. So this is what we’re talking about today but the besides prospecting this is my question, the besides prospecting for new leads. And browsing the files of prospects before meetings what other use cases can you tell us about?

Chris: That’s it Yoni, that’s all you need LinkedIn for. I’m fucking with you dude. You know what first of all you know for prospecting and also just kind of staying touch part or one of the other added features that I think is valuable in LinkedIn is the easiest way to put is not Facebook.

Yoni: Right

Chris: And the reason being is Facebook is more sharing your family photos and doing this and that. The nice thing about LinkedIn is it’s almost self-policing from a standpoint of people really only put up information that is kind of business related I guess. And depending on who you’re connected with, when you jump onto LinkedIn, just LinkedIn.com you’ve got your stream that comes down with information that’s being shared by your connections.

And you know one of the things I find extremely valuable is some of the information that your connections start sharing with the network. And how you can leverage that or learn more about specific things I guess. So I mean it’s a great tool for that aspect. And in the same vein if you go over to the… I’m trying to remember it’s the forth tab over. If I had LinkedIn open I’d be able to tell you what it is. But if you go in there, there is ‘Pulse’, and Pulse is kind of an amalgamation of lots of different stories and news feeds that come out for different magazines companies… online magazines, you know influencers a whole bunch of different things.

So it’s you know for me it’s a valuable tool just, to even educate yourself. On the flip side there are a few other things that are associated with LinkedIn that I think is valuable, one being “Linda.com” which is their online content learning portal. And the other one being also “Slide Share” and same thing Slide Share is where you could post up you know your presentations, your white papers; you can also put videos up on there too or embed YouTube videos, so once again more education or more information that way. That’s kind of one of the other ways I look at it.

The other way too is one other thing is LinkedIn groups which I think are phenomenal. If you can get into specific groups, you know same thing if you sell into a specific area and join a group that’s wrapped around that area, then there’s a lot of valuable information that you can start pulling out of that one as well because there’s a lot of thought leadership that goes in there as well. And a great place to connect with like-minded individuals as well.

Yoni: Okay so let me be the Devil’s Advocate here for a second.

Chris: Sure

Yoni: You mentioned like 4 different platforms.

Chris: Yep

Yoni: And 4 different use cases on LinkedIn but for me I think as a sales person there is a very thin line between using LinkedIn to go ahead with your sales thing you know and escaping into LinkedIn. You know it’s a social network at the end of the day. How do you stay focused on sales and not get distracted? You know read about this; get connected there and where are your quotas?

Chris: Absolutely, good thing I mean you get lost in anything if you start doing it. It’s one of those things where you’re going down a rabbit hole I guess is the phrase they talk about. So what you need to do, is me personally you have to kind of limit your time on the platform and understand exactly what it is you want to do.

So to give you an example of how I leverage it on a daily basis is I usually set time aside kind of every morning and I’ve baked it into my schedule so that I have to do this which is I need to either connect with the right people or stay in contact with the right people and then on top of it is I typically put out when I write a post on Sales Tip a Day I’ll take it and put it up on LinkedIn as well because I’ll get extra readership I guess is the best way on that one.

So I’ll put that in and say okay I’m going to spend 10 minutes doing this, I’m going to spend 10 minutes doing this and 10 minutes doing that. You really kind of… you have to self pace yourself and say really it’s going to be my calendar; this is what I’m going to do. If it goes beyond that make sure you’re not spending 8 hours doing it. If it goes less you know what just walk away or start doing something else. But you have to police yourself and limit yourself on what it is you’re trying to do online I guess is the best thing. That would go with any social platform I think.

Yoni: Yeah but you know Facebook it doesn’t work so how long do you give yourself on LinkedIn?

Chris: Me in the mornings it’s kind of… so the way I do it is I block off an hour every morning. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m on it for an hour. What I’m doing is… I’m either looking at what’s going on, connecting or reaching out to people to try to line up meetings; so prospecting I guess is a good way to look at it and also creating content that will potentially go up on LinkedIn as well.

And then on top of it I set aside in that hour I’ve also got the ability to create online courses or you know start hammering away at the books that I’m writing right now that will eventually end up on Amazon as well. So you know really I put an hour aside, I bet you 20 minutes of it is probably working on prospecting or reconnecting and 40 minutes are writing a blog post, doing videos or doing whatever.

Yoni: Okay so about that you mentioned in your playbook that you talk about the importance of getting noticed, elevating above the noise.

Chris: Yeah

Yoni: So why is that important? Because for me aren’t we supposed to be the ones selling, why do we need to be noticed and ranked high in LinkedIn search results.

Chris: So I’ll tell you what, one of the things is its how you get found and how people start to approach you. And one of the stats LinkedIn has and don’t quote me on this because I don’t remember stuff exactly 100% right. But one of the pillars of what they call the “Social Selling Index” on LinkedIn is… is becoming an industry thought leader is one of those things; so sharing relevant information; or putting information out or sharing it with individuals.

And if I’m not mistaken I believe the stat is that a B-B buyer is 5 times more likely to engage with you if you’re seeing as kind of that industry thought leader. So sharing information or putting out new information out and so forth right. And so for me you know it’s interesting a lot of people still pick up the phone and still ‘Cold Call’. And I find that just absolutely absurd, whereas if you are on LinkedIn.

Yoni: You’ve just lost half of the guys watching this.

Chris: You know I think there’s a place and time for phone I know that’s a lot you business here guys but that’s the follow-up. Its how do we get someone to talk to us? And that’s the follow-up is getting on the phone and building that relationship right, so it’s very important to be seen as a thought leader. The other thing too on this is if you put a piece of content out but it doesn’t necessarily have to be yours, it’s something you may have found.

If it’s relevant to the people that are connected to you, then the stats say 20% of people will see your posting you put up or something that you shared. If you do that 20 times a month then it’s not that tough but if you do that 20 times a month 60% of the people that you’re connected to will actually end up seeing that. So you know it’s one of those thing where you just get seen as a thought leader or if you’re finding great content and ensuring that information.

Then people will reach out to you and you really don’t have to pick up the phone to start knocking on doors, it starts automatically coming your way as well. So that’s why

Yoni: 20 times a month, that’s like a second job right?

Chris: Not really actually… so once again you’ll see in one of the upcoming posts that I have on my website… I may have already posted it but I give a tip away on how to do this. So you go to a site called ‘Stumble Upon’ and then what you do is there are categories on Stumble Abbot so self improved business marketing, you know you name it they’ve got tons of different things on there so you can go in.

And what I do is I’ll just jump on Stumble Upon and I’ll just start clicking through articles and if one catches me I’ll read it. If it makes sense then I’ll just go in and I’ll social share it and put it up on LinkedIn. And literally that process takes me I don’t know 5 minutes a day if I do it. And believe me there is days I don’t do it because I post my own posts up on there that gets seen. But you know if I find something that’s of interest, boom just throw it up and chuck it up on there and really it doesn’t take that long to do.

Yoni: So… one thing that really caught my eye was that you mentioned all the differences with having a free account or paid one or a premium one. And difference that really caught my eye was the one about the size of your profile picture. What is the story there?

Chris: So what happens is there is a couple of things, so there is profile picture and there is also the way your profile displays them in the results; so the first one is your profile pictures. I think it’s like 30% or 33% bigger. The other thing too is that when you look… so when you go on LinkedIn and find someone who has got a premium account which is a paid for account their actual profile at the top is much larger than someone who has got a free account. And the other thing too is there is more information displayed in that.

So you’ve got to remember most people look at stuff what they call above the folder or the bottom of the page on your screen. So it’s almost like a bill board for you, an advertisement for you is the best way to put it. The other side to that is that within a premium account, so if anyone, you could use this as an example, people can look up Chris Hamilton on LinkedIn. And I’ll show up somewhere in there. And you’re going to see and I’ve got a premium account and you’ll see that my profile is twice the size and the display results than someone who has got a free account and it displays more information.

So once again it’s bigger and in that case your eyes are drawn into something that’s different than the other ones that are sitting out there. And on any given page you maybe have at the most I’ve ever seen I think is like 4 people displayed with premium accounts but in most cases only 18% of people have a premium account. So on average you can only see 2 people on that page have a premium account displayed. Now that I’ve mentioned this people do it. Your eyes will gravitate towards that bigger listing just because it’s different than the other stuff right and that’s what it is now.

Here’s something else I’ll give a tip on this one and it might be coming up. I don’t know whether I’ve posted it or not yet. But the other thing with the premium account is I did an experiment in Calgary where I live. And I ran a test to see how many sales people have a premium account compared to like VP or sales managers that have a premium account. And VPs and sales managers had an account and it was probably like 22% of the time versus 11% for sales people, so sales people that say to me sale people are investing in themselves, whereas sales managers are; so think about that for a second.

And then if these people also have a premium account. So a lot of people are trying to go out and try to connect with people on LinkedIn, here’s the little trick that you can use. In a premium account depending on how they have their profile set up, in about 80% of people have this. You can actually send them a direct in-mail, even if you’re not connected to them, it doesn’t cost a cent and it’s free to connect. Whereas normally if you’re trying to send something and you don’t have a premium account, it costs you $10 to buy a credit for an in-mail. So you save yourself 10 bucks.

And the other thing too is for example guys for your sake say you’re looking for VPs of sales in North America you know you just pump that in. If I were you I’d just go through and see who has got a premium account, open up their profile and you can send them a direct message like 80% of the time. So it saves yourself a ton of dough.

Yoni: Wow

Chris: Interesting

Yoni: Yeah

Ohad: I love this one!

Chris: Anything about saving money right.

Yoni: Chris you know as usual a pleasure. So anyone listening and you guys here in our community you’re welcomed to check out OneSalesTipaDay.com. Chris Hamilton anything you’d like to add to that?

Chris: Don’t worry about it, and come on take a look… I write it so I think its great information. Information for anyone there and by all means anyone, reach out at anytime and connect with me I’m more than happy to chat.

Yoni: And just one last thing about your playbook.

Chris: Yeah

Yoni: Where can we find that?

Chris: Well I can tell you what so if you go on to Sales Tip a Day as you mentioned… by putting each kind of post up directly… but if someone wants to get access to it, they can email me at Chris@SalesTipaDay.com and I will for your viewers I’ll send them a link so they can get it for free. It’s up for 299 on the site that I’m using, so you can access it at SalesTipaDay.com or if you want.

Yoni: We’ll add that link at the bottom.

Chris: Okay and if they want it for free… you know what I’ll send you guys a link where they can reach out to me. But I’ll send you guys a link and I’ll make it zero cost for anyone to get access to it… special for you too.

Yoni: We love free stuff.

Chris: My favorite is for brothers man, anything for you guys.

Yoni: Alright Chris as usual a pleasure like having you on our next show anything else, Ohad?

Ohad: I do have a quick addition usually lately I’ve been using a lot, spending a lot of time on LinkedIn and I realized that you can get a lot cool new stuff from the new apps they just released. They just released some major apps for both Android and IOS apps.

Yoni: Yep

Ohad: You can get a lot of it just you know for using it on a regular account… connecting to anyone. And it doesn’t really matter if you have a premium account or not, as long as you use the mobile app so you can search anyone, just connect with one click you can connect with any person.

Yoni: The only thing you need are powerful thumbs.

Chris: I’ll give you my thoughts on the app okay. So sorry we’re going a little longer than probably anticipated, so here is my thought on the app about 2months ago LinkedIn changed the mail system to a messenger system and I think was an advance to them launching their new app. So they had an app called “Connected”.

And they’re discontinuing that the next month. So it’s going to be gone; you have to use new LinkedIn profile. So here is the thing, they did that because people are just going to start sending messages through the Android and IOS app, 55% of people access LinkedIn via their mobile phone. And that grew 31% from the same time last year, so you can see where they’re going with this stuff right. The only aggravation is you can’t find a phone number or an email address for a person on any of the accounts.

So how you get around that is when you go into your summary and I found that by total fluke I found this, first line in your summary put contact me. And if you look at mine it says contact Chris Hamilton at 4036301243 or Chris@SalesTipaDay.

And what happens is in your profile at the very top it sucks in the very first line from the summary and puts it up there, so that way people can see your email and your phone number so they don’t have to hunt for it or use the platform to contact you that way. So there you go there’s another tip for.

Yoni: Right alright so Chris thank you

Chris: You are very welcomed gentlemen appreciate it and thanks for your time too.

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Ohad Oren

Ohad Oren is Co-Founder and COO of ONDiGO. Prior to ONDiGO he Co-founded several start-ups. Ohad has years of experience in Sales and Business Management. You can follow him on twitter on @OrenOhad
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